The faceless woman—as in Edwin Ushiro's "Cut Like When Asakusa Recovered Mujina"—is a classic ghost.

Only 30, Ushiro has just had his first Los Angeles solo exhibition and, in October, will be featured in a show in Zurich.

He grew up in Wailuku, where, he says, “As a kid, I saw that lines could represent something that doesn’t yet exist in this world.” By profession a conceptual artist and a visual effects consultant, Ushiro’s fine art features themes recognizable to a Hawaii audience—night marchers or mischievous ghosts called lapu.

“Ghost stories are everywhere in Hawaii,” he says. Having a Japanese mother, he sees himself straddling both cultures. “In Japan, the paranormal is so common in culture and folklore. And Hawaiian culture is like that, too. It’s not like I sit down and try to make an image. It’s a flash of insight; I’ll be taking out the trash or something, and an image is shoved in my brain, and I’ll think, ‘That’s cool.’ Then I sit down and try to replicate it as best I can.”

He calls the ghost tours and obake books by Glen Grant “a major influence” in his art. “He was a living document of all the mythologies of Hawaii.”

To see more of artist Edwin Ushiro’s work, and to read about some of the ghost stories that inspired him, visit www.mrushiro.com.